Matthea Harvey to Collaborate with Miró Quartet for Poetry Radio Project

Festival closes with a collaborative performance by the Miró Quartet and poet Matthea Harvey, to be recorded for broadcast on American Public Media’s Performance Today

June 4, 2009

CHICAGO — The Poetry Foundation, American Public Media’s Performance Today, and the White Pine Festival are collaborating on the latest installation of the Poetry Radio Project to present the Miró Quartet, a string ensemble, and poet Matthea Harvey in a multidisciplinary performance of classical music and poetry on Sunday, June 21, at 4 p.m. at Trinity Lutheran Church in Stillwater, Minnesota.

WHO:Miró Quartet and Matthea Harvey

WHAT: The critically acclaimed Miró Quartet and prize-winning poet Harvey close the White Pine Festival with a performance, hosted by Performance Today’s Fred Child, that will interweave music and poetry and feature a debut of Harvey’s new multi-part work.

Founded in 1995 at the Oberlin Conservatory and greeted with immediate success and critical acclaim, the dynamic Miró Quartet has risen to the top of the international chamber music scene in only a decade, captivating audiences and critics around the world with its youthful intensity and mature interpretations.

Winner of the prestigious 2009 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and widely heralded as one of the best poets of her generation, Matthea Harvey draws from a variety of sources for her poems: music, scraps of conversation, images, and paintings; she identifies herself as “a general gatherer.” Critics call her equally a “conductor as she is a poet: much of her work reads as if she’s created a dazzling system and is then pushing language through the structure she’s created.” “America’s younger poets are generating more than their share of our country’s best writing . . . Matthea Harvey is a case in point,” said the New York Times. Harvey is the author of Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form (Alice James Books, 2000), Sad Little Breathing Machine (Graywolf Press, 2004), and Modern Life (Graywolf Press, 2007), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book, and recently earned her the $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. She is a contributing editor to jubilat, Meatpaper, and BOMB and teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.

This performance is made possible by the Poetry Radio Project, a collaboration between the Poetry Foundation and American Public Media. For more information on the Poetry Radio Project, visit www.americanpublicmedia.org/poetryradioproject.

About Poetry FoundationThe Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine and one of the largest literary organizations in the world, exists to discover and celebrate the best poetry and to place it before the largest possible audience. The Poetry Foundation seeks to be a leader in shaping a receptive climate for poetry by developing new audiences, creating new avenues for delivery, and encouraging new kinds of poetry through innovative literary prizes and programs. For more information, please visit www.poetryfoundation.org.

About American Public MediaAmerican Public Media is the largest owner and operator of public radio stations, also producing top programs reaching more than 16 million listeners weekly. A complete list of stations, programs, and additional services for the American Public Media national network can be obtained at www.americanpublicmedia.org.

About White Pine FestivalThe White Pine Festival is an annual series of world-class artistic and intellectual events set amid the natural beauty of Stillwater, Minnesota, and Hudson, Wisconsin. The White Pine Festival explores challenging ideas from a wide range of artistic and intellectual perspectives, including music, literature, visual art, history, poetry, nature, science, and philosophy. Festival participants are encouraged to view art and the world in new ways and to approach the task with the vitality, humor, and candor one finds in conversations among close friends. For more information, visit www.whitepinefestival.org.